Caring responsibilities have somewhat dampened this year’s summer holidays. My wife keeps feeling compelled to apologise. She’s finding looking after her elderly mother trying, to say the least.
The day began with our lad begging me to take him to town. But then our neighbour appeared, and they both spent the day helping her instead, starting with making hay, through to clearing beneath the hazel trees, and finally looking after the cows, rewarded along the way with garden produce. Me: I had the …
Our neighbour is making hay for her cows; the kids are helping her. Good fun.
For a decade, before we built this house, we made do with a rather smaller dwelling during our stay. It was supposed to be a quick fix when we first put it up, to afford us some privacy and a place to rest our heads. Actually, it started life as a barn, already existent when …
In the decade we’ve had a place on this hill, I’ve never been to the other side of the valley. There are various paths and lanes on beyond our house which lead that way, but the prospect of running into wild animals (bears, boars, snakes) or a guard dog has always made that trek more …
From the window beside my desk, I watch a white 4×4 pickup pull up outside our house. Three men get out one by one and wander down into our garden. They seem to be heading for our apple tree; perhaps those big juicy fruit look irresistible.
Lucky kids. While I work at my computer, they sit cross-legged in a hazelnut grove with our neighbour, tending to her cows. They’re living the good life, playing at being rural villagers. That’s the life for me too, but I have bills to pay. So on with project tasks and meetings, grateful for these technologies …
My beloved looks at me apologetically. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “Sorry for what?” I ask, perplexed.
When working remotely, data can be much like the natural spring which feeds our home: a precious resource to be managed carefully. Just as we have an enclosed reservoir up there in the forest in which the spring water gathers and rests — an often finite resource, limited by the flow rate in and our …
We are really blessed with the relative coolness and freshness up on this hill. The kids insisted I take them to town this afternoon for a meal, icecream and generally hanging about, but even they had to concede it was too hot down there. We’re all glad to be back home.
Back home, the locals walk the dog. Round here, they walk their cows, grazing them on the verges and beneath the hazel trees.
Produce of the kitchen garden: cucumbers and beans.
This is a land of no plans. Whatever plans we make — however long-planned — will be blown out of the water at short notice. We are forever at the mercy of the plans of others, changing our own at the drop of a hat. We are, of course, always the hospitable host; to adapt …
Sitting here chilling on my sofa, it’s pretty awesome that I can clearly see the waterfront vista of the first city in a neighbouring country on the horizon without even straining my eyes.
